Linux Timeline

As part of our 100th issue celebration,
we present 100 of the most significant events in Linux history. As
shown in the timeline, the first issue of Linux Journal coincided with the release of Linux 1.0. Ever
since, the fortunes of our magazine have followed those of Linux at
large.

It's been a wild eight years, filled with a variety of
exciting events. Choosing only 100 was a difficult task, and
certainly some readers will be quick to point out events they would
have chosen that we did not, but the following manages to maintain
the roller-coaster ride that is Linux history.

We would like to recognize our indebtedness to Rebecca Sobol
and Jonathan Corbet at Linux Weekly News, for allowing us to borrow
heavily from the timeline featured on their site and for their
accurate and gracious historical editing.

August 1991

“Hello everybody out there using minix - I'm doing a (free)
operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like
gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and
is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on things people
like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same
physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) among
other things).I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and
things seem to work. This implies that I'll get something practical
within a few months, and I'd like to know what features most people
would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won't promise I'll
implement them :-) Linus (PS. Yes - it's free of any minix code,
and it has a multi-threaded fs. It is NOT protable (uses 386 task
switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other
than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(.”

September 1991

Linux version 0.01 is released and put on the Net.

April 1992

The first Linux newsgroup, comp.os.linux, is proposed and
started by Ari Lemmke.

October 1992

Peter MacDonald announces SLS, the first standalone Linux
install. At least 10MB of space on disk was recommended.

June 1993

Slackware, by Patrick Volkerding, becomes the first
commercial standalone distribution and quickly becomes popular
within the Linux community.

August 1993

Matt Welsh's Linux Installation and Getting
Started, version 1 is released. This is the first book
on Linux.

While at a conference in New Orleans, Jon “maddog” Hall
persuades Linus to port Linux to DEC's 64-bit Alpha computer
processor chip. Less than two weeks later, maddog had also
persuaded DEC to fund the project. An Alpha workstation was
immediately sent to Linus. “Digital [DEC] and the Linux community
formed the first truly successful venture of suits and Linux geeks
working together”, said maddog.

Linux International, a nonprofit vendor organization, is
founded by Jon “maddog” Hall. Linux International goes on to
become a major contributor to the success of Linux, helping
corporations and others work toward the promotion of the Linux
operating system.

August 1994

Linux trademark dispute: is Linux trademarked? William R.
Della Croce, Jr. files for the trademark “Linux” on August 15,
1994, and it is registered in September. Della Croce has no known
involvement in the Linux community yet sends letters out to
prominent Linux companies demanding money for use of the trademark
“Linux”. A lawsuit is filed in 1996 against Della Croce.
Plai.pngfs in the suit include Linus Torvalds; Specialized Systems
Consultants, Inc. (publishers of Linux Journal); Yggdrasil Computing, Inc.; Linux
International; and WorkGroup Solutions (also known as LinuxMall).
The plaintiffs prevail, and in 1997 announce the matter as settled
by the assignment of the mark to Linus Torvalds on behalf of all
Petitioners and Linux users.

The "alt" hierarchy has never been considered an authoritative location for a newsgroup. To create an alt.* newsgroup, all you had to do was send a "newgroup" message and it would spread across the usenet and be created. The "comp" hierarchy required/requires a vote process. The creation date of a comp.os.linux newsgroup would have reflected sufficient recognition in the usenet community to support the formal creation of the group.

Many claim that Netscape Communications's decision to release its browser suite as open source software was the event that convinced many large corporations that the Linux operating system (and the free software movement in general) was viable and should be embraced.

Netscape announces that they will release the source to their browser under a free software license. This almost certainly remains one of the most important events of the year; it opened a lot of eyes to what Linux and free software could provide.

Seems odd that more than one and a half years worth of Linux is simply left out here. What's wrong with that period? I started using Linux at this point and I'm pretty sure MANY noteworthy things happened. How about "Linux Kernel 2.0"?

Yes, especially the Halloween paper was a very important point in Linux history as it showed that Linux got so important that even MS feared...

Please insert this one and remove the Skylarov part, it's not about Linux at all.

But the article is quite good, although I would have liked to see more technical things, less business oriented. Kernel 2.0 was not mentioned and other important technical steps like the first release of X Window for Linux are missing, too. After all, those are the things that made Linux a success...

No mention of Eazel or Loki. I can't believe id Software wasn't mentioned. I don't think I'm alone when I say they single handedly saved OpenGL and freedom of (commercial) computer graphics and helped Linux incredibly since almost day one. I would have also liked some updates on GNU software. For example, what gcc, binutils, etc. were in use from Linux 0.x to 1.x to 2.x, etc. Would be quite cool to see how everything updated. Oh, and, um. WHERE IS THE GIMP?! Perl? Python? Are you guys nuts?! Perhaps there needs to be a comprehensive timeline... wiki-style.

Unix-compatible software system called GNU (for Gnu's Not Unix), and give it away free(1) to everyone who can use it. Contributions of time, money, programs and equipment are greatly needed.

To begin with, GNU will be a kernel plus all the utilities needed to write and run C programs: editor, shell, C compiler, linker, assembler, and a few other things. After this we will add a text formatter, a YACC, an Empire game, a spreadsheet, and hundreds of other things. We hope to supply, eventually, everything useful that normally comes with a Unix system, and anything else useful, including

I was pretty choked by this, too, despite never supporting them (like by using Debian). I kept meaning to send LJ a nasty note, but voila, here's a web forum.

Sure, it was probably hard to pare down the list only 100 events, but c'mon, no mention of being adopted as the kernel for an otherwise kick-ass operating system (without which Linux would be... useless)

Correct. But you should apply that same sentence to Linux as well. If you call Linux an "operating system", then it's indeed very far from finished. OK, the kernel is here, but what about all the rest?

GNU + Linux is a usable operating system, hence GNU/Linux. You don't need Stallman to realize that. GNU never intended to write all software from scratch, only the proprietary parts.

I agree that the graffitti incident is probably not all that important, but what I would count as a hallmark is the appearance of the first IBM television commercial, the one with the tough-cop voice-over and scenes of bohemian Helsinki; this marks the introduction of Linux to the television audience and is as significant as the Forbes interview.

Please please don't say such stupid things. How many times do they have to tell the world!? Now *read* carefully, pick up a crayon and write it down at least a kazillion times (yes dumbo, read the license):

"The Qt GUI Toolkit is Copyright (C) 1994-2000 Trolltech AS.

You may use, distribute and copy the Qt GUI Toolkit under the terms of

GNU General Public License version 2, which is displayed below."

(From the Qt 2.3.0 tarball).

Now pick up a new crayon (by now the other one should be gone), and write: "I should not comment on things I do not know about."

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